Tavis Smiley interviews former U.N. Inspector Scott Ritter who has a new book out titled "Iraq Confidential : The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein" (Official Site, Amazon page).

Ritter puts together the evidence of an Iraq intelligence conspiracy by connecting the dots with known facts and media reports. The Administrations of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush are all implicated in falsifying intelligence for the purpose of creating regime change in Iraq.

Ritter alleges that the United States purposefully undermined the authority of the U.N. by voting for sanctions against Iraq that would be lifted when inspectors could verify that all weapons of mass destruction had been removed. Officials in the Bush #1 and Clinton administrations admitted that the sanctions would never be lifted regardless of the removal of Saddam's WMDs. The official policy of the United States was to impose permanent sanctions until Saddam was removed from power. The U.S. policy effectively undermined the credibility and authority of the U.N. Security Council.

Scott Ritter goes on to explain that Iraq under control of Saddam Hussein was never a direct threat to the security of the United States. All disputes could have been solved with focused diplomacy. Ritter says that no American lives needed to be lost over the fabricated threat that Iraq posed.

Ritter points out the Neo-conservative group that gained power under President Reagan as the primary driver of this conspiracy to manipulate the CIA and intelligence data about Iraq's WMD, undermine the United Nations, and the remove Saddam Hussein at all costs.

The Neocons are still in power and the conspiracy outlined by Scott Ritter continues to control U.S. foreign policy today.

Abu Dhabi TV which is located in The United Arab Emirates broadcasts this report on prisoner abuse by "Iraqis and Americans" in Iraq.

Amnesty International found crimes so severe that they are considered "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity." They also found that American forces have detained 14,000 Iraqis.

Iraqis that have been released are almost never given an explanation for their detention or compensation. In the video, one Iraq can seen being released decrying his imprisonment as "terrorism! terrorism! terrorism!"

The Bush Administration has ordered investigations into who blew the whistle leaked information about NSA domestic spying and information about secret CIA prisons.

Employees of the CIA and other agencies have been questioned and forced to undergo polygraph testing. The Justice Department has warned that journalists may also be prosecuted under Federal espionage laws.

This video is a segment from Monday's MSNBC Countdown. Craig Crawford discusses the chilling effect this attack has on the ability to report information about the government. In effect, we are quickly getting to the point where only official information released by the government can be reported by the media.

You may also want to take a look at this video at C&L where David Gergen rails against the Bush Admin. for being worse than Nixon about secrecy and the press.

Senator Pat Roberts convinced Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee to vote to kill an investigation into the NSA domestic spying scandal. Instead of an investigation, Republican Senators Hagel, Snow and Dewine agreed to create a new subcommittee that would oversee future domestic spying by the NSA.

Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller said that "this is an unprecedented bow to political pressure from the White House."

A Denver teacher, Jay Bennish, was suspended after he made a loose comparison between Bush's and Hilter's foreign policies. A student made an audio recording of the teacher's comments. The same student may have been attempting to draw provocative comments from the teacher by asking specific questions.

Instead of contacting the teacher or the school, the parents "shopped" the audio tape around to different right-wing radio shows. Both the teacher and the student have now been suspended.

NBC Today had the first exclusive interview with Bennish. He says that he has had a great deal of support from his students and community. The parents of the student that made the audio tape still have not contacted him.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHT FROM BRAD: While the Wingnut Media has spent hours upon hours trashing this obscure, previously unknown high-school teacher from a small town in Colorado for the answers he gave to the recording-student in front of a few dozen classmates, to date, we're unaware of any of those same Wingnuts having aired Ann Coulter's recent "Raghead Speech".

Her speech was given as the keynote address, to a packed house of thousands and a standing ovation at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held a couple of weeks ago in D.C. The CPAC is the nation's largest and most important "Conservative" annual gathering and featured other speakers such as Dick Cheney and Bill Frist etc. Coulter also discussed the assassination of Bill Clinton and the bombing of the Supreme Court in her speech. The entire speech can be heard here on BRAD BLOG (if not on Rush, O'Reilly, Hannity et al, where you can hear the high-school teacher's lecture to a few dozen students over and over again.)

ALSO...:Newshounds has great coverage of how Hannity et al, are taking Bennish's comments out of context and mis-quoting him, etc. to fit their own agenda and to fool their gullible, captive audiences who seem to be less educated than the high schoolers Bennish was speaking to.

Most Americans believe that John McCain's anti-torture bill clearly protects prisoners in U.S. custody from abuse. Most Americans also believe that the conditions for detainees have improved since the Abu Ghraib scandal and some initial problems at the U.S. detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Republican PR efforts to change American's perceptions of detainee treatment have been have been successful. The truth is that the Bush Administration has used the McCain anti-torture bill to codify a policy of torture that is now embedded in our legal system for perpetuity.

Professor Alfred McCoy is the author of a new book, "A Question of Torture", in which he gives a history of US torture from the CIA's development of torture techniques through the latest generation of systematic torture in the Bush Administration's "war on terror".

McCoy explains how the Bush Administration has purposefully crafted a strategy of torture. They have claimed executive powers and have had laws re-interpreted by Administration lawyers to give the government the power to continue the practice. Loopholes slipped into the McCain bill now ensure an enduring policy of torture.

Democracy Now interviewed Professor McCoy several weeks ago. We've taken about 9 minutes of clips frmo the 23 minute interview and provided them here. The entire interview and transcript are available from Democracy Now.

Due to the focus on detainees' human rights at Guantánamo, the U.S. is quietly expanding a detention center at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. In the past few years, the population has increased by 5 times. While there has been significant legal action over Gitmo, little has been done for the detainees at Bagram. Many say the conditions at Bagram are far worse than even during the height of the Abu Ghraib abuse.

Ex-CIA Officer Paul Pillar was in charge of providing intelligence about Iraq to the White House prior to the beginning of the war.

In a recently released paper, Pillar wrote,

... intelligence was misused to justify decisions already made...

In short, the Bush team misrepresented, misused, mislead and completely lied to the American people about the reasons for going to war in Iraq. Pillar provides more evidence of what most of us already know...

Known for her role in the 2000 Presidential debacle, Katherine Harris has been linked to illegal campaign contributions funneled from a defense contractor who has also been convicted for bribing former Representative Cunningham.

As a member of the House of Representatives, Harris tried to secure a $10-million Federal deal for the convicted defense contractor. At about the same time, one of Harris' aides, Mona Yost, was hired by the same contractor.

Katherine Harris denies knowledge of the illegal campaign contributions. Randy "Duke" Cunningham is being sentenced today for accepting bribes in exchange for securing Federal contracts and other favors.

Recent court filings by Patrick Fitzgerald indicate that Bob Woodward may have audio tapes that of who leaked information about CIA operative Valerie Plame to him. Woodward's source may also be Novak's second source. Novak's first source is already known to be Karl Rove.

Novak's second source has always been a matter of great speculation. Up to this time, Novak described his second source as "no partisan gunslinger". Jeralyn at TalkLeft guesses that Novak's second source may be Stephen Hadley or Richard Armitage.

This is truly amazing reporting from a very dangerous situation. A film crew from UK's Channel Four was threatened with execution while filming the Taliban burning a school accused of teaching Western ideology.

It seems that the camera man is on his knees as members of the Taliban threaten the lives of the film crew. Before the matter is resolved, machine gun fire is heard and the Taliban men scramble for cover. Pakistani special police are seen running into the frame shooting wildly into the air.

As the Taliban disappear, the Pakistani police begin beating the film crew. The producer falls to the ground and he is repeatedly hit with an assault riffle. The police are clearly not trained well. Apparently, all of the Taliban were able to escape this encounter.

President Bush visited Afghanistan earlier this week and trumpeted success of the war. Facts on the ground call Mr. Bush's claims into question.

MSNBC Countdown reports on the tapes of FEMA/Bush teleconferences held the day before Katrina hit New Orleans. Bush was on the call when the experts said they were concerned about the levees and a "disaster within a disaster" at the Superdome.

Just hours after AP released the tapes, the White House responded with a transcript where Brownie says that Bush was "engaged." A very weak rebuttal, indeed. What's more is that the White House had earlier refused to turn over this same document to the Congressional investigation on Katrina.

Stephen Colbert, in character as always, frowns on Bush's latest approval poll numbers. Highlighting a Scottish investigation into a Bush bicycling accident, Colbert reminds us of the many cuts, bruises and falls the President has sustained in past years.

Colbert offers the obtuse suggestion that Iraqi's problems could simply be solved with "Iraqi-Gras".

MURTHA: They have to settle this themselves. They have to settle the underlying problems which have caused the insecurity there.

For instance, water supply, the electricity supply, the oil supply. All those things are prewar level. And there's no way they're going to settle.

Unemployment is 60 percent. There's no way they're going to settle this by talking about it. It's not rhetoric.

And the military has done everything they can do. They have done a marvelous job. Now it's up to the political leaders to take hold of this thing and settle it themselves.

And, you know, I keep getting different reports about the Iraqis being ready to take over, and then the next day they say there's no battalions ready. But the Iraqis themselves have more confidence in their police and in their army than they do in the United States Army.

We have become the enemy, and our troops, unfortunately, have become the targets. So it's time to redeploy our troops.